16. Bewitchmentse

The method of ceremonial bewitchments varies with times and persons; all subtle and domineering people find its secrets and its practice within themselves, without even actually calculating about them or reasoning on their sequence. Herein they follow instinctive inspirations of the Great Agent, which, as we have said, accommodates itself marvellously to our vices and our virtues. It may be generally laid down, however, that we are subjected to the wills of others according to the analogies of our tendencies and above all of our faults. To pamper the weakness of an individuality is to possess ourselves of that individuality and convert it into an instrument in the order of the same errors or depravities. Now, when two natures whose defects are analogous become subordinated one to another, the result is a sort of substitution of the stronger for the weaker, an actual obsession of one mind by the other. Very often the weaker may struggle and seek to revolt, but it falls only deeper in servitude. So did Louis XIII conspire against Richelieu and subsequently, so to speak, sought his pardon by abandoning his accomplices. We have all a ruling defect, which is for our soul as the umbilical cord of its birth in sin, and it is by this that the enemy can always lay hold upon us: for some it is vanity, for others idleness, for the majority egotism. Let a wicked and crafty mind avail itself of this means and we are lost; we may not go mad or turn idiots, but we become positively alienated, in all the force of the expression -that is, we are subjected to a foreign suggestion. In such a state one dreads instinctively everything that might bring us back to reason, and will not even listen to representations that are opposed to our obsession. Here is one of the most dangerous disorders which can affect the moral nature. The sole remedy for such a bewitchment is to make use of folly itself in order to cure folly, to provide the sufferer with imaginary satisfactions in the opposite order to that wherein he is now lost. Endeavour, for example, to cure an ambitious person by making him desire the glories of heaven - mystic remedy; cure one who is dissolute by true love - natural remedy; obtain honourable successes for a vain person; exhibit unselfishness to the avaricious and procure for them legitimate profit by honourable participation in generous enterprises, etc. Acting in this way upon the moral nature, we may succeed in curing a number of physical maladies, for the moral affects the physical in virtue of the magical axiom: “That which is above is like unto that which is below.” This is why the Master said, when speaking of the paralyzed woman: “Satan has bound her.” A disease invariably originates in a deficiency or an excess, and ever at the root of a physical evil we shall find a moral disorder. This is an unchanging law of Nature.